Week 3 Day 5

​Psalm 107:10-16
10 Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness,
prisoners suffering in iron chains,
11 because they rebelled against God’s commands
and despised the plans of the Most High.
12 So he subjected them to bitter labor;
they stumbled, and there was no one to help.
13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he saved them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness,
and broke away their chains.
15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love
and his wonderful deeds for mankind,
16 for he breaks down gates of bronze
and cuts through bars of iron.
 
 
Have you ever sat in darkness?   I mean total and complete darkness?  I have.   In so many ways it can be an unsettling experience.  You can hold your hand 3 inches in front of your face and not be able to see it.  That is what it is to reject God’s commands, His teaching, His design.  
 
The old hymn “Come Thou Fount” has a verse that says:
 
“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
  Prone to leave the God I love:
Take my heart, oh, take and seal it
  With Thy Spirit from above.
Rescued thus from sin and danger,
  Purchased by the Savior’s blood,
May I walk on earth a stranger,
  As a son and heir of God.”
 
That’s our fallen hearts, prone to wander.  It is easy to get too busy for God as we build our kingdoms of dirt.  So often we find our way into the darkness.  I don’t mean drugs, addiction, etc., although it can be that.  I mean we wonder from God in a desire to feed our own desires.  We lose our way and our eyes stray from Jesus (Heb. 12:1-2).  We insist on “believing in ourselves” when we should be believing in God.  In the process we wonder into darkness. 
 
What should we do?  Pray!!!
 
Oswald Chamber in his book If You Will Ask says, “Prayer is an interruption of personal ambition, and no person who is busy has time to pray. What will suffer is the life of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer.” (p. 9)
 
Look at verse 13 again.  When we are at the end of our rope, the bottom of the pit, or at our wits end we must pray.  When we finally realize that our business, our ambitions, our desire to be great have not provided the fulfillment and happiness we thought they would.  When everything else has failed and we find ourselves in the dark, pray. 
 
God’s repose in this Psalm to the prayer is to bring them out of the darkness!  What a good God. 
 
Do you find yourself in the dark?  Pray.  Is someone you love in the dark?  Pray that they will pray and seek the goodness of God.